Breakaway
Prologue
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters in this fic!
The tension brought on by reading through the piles upon piles of applications for the college scholarships was getting to him. Leaning back in his chair, he rubbed the bridge of his nose and closed his dark, obsidian eyes, hoping against hope that the stack of applications he had yet to read through would miraculously jump from his in-basket to his completed basket. And he had only read a pitiful amount so far, had barely finished with all the last names beginning with the letter A, and had many more to peruse before he could consider himself finished with his tedious and rather arduous chore. When he cracked open an eye, he noted with some chagrin that it hadn't happened. None of the damned pieces of paper had moved from where he had placed them. There were still too many for him to count, waiting patiently in his in-basket. Disgusted, he slid back from his cluttered desk and stood up, needing something more active to do than simply pushing around applications, and meandered his way towards the long row of windows that ran from floor to ceiling, letting in the dark of the night. Laying his forehead against the smooth glass of the window, he stared unseeingly at the twinkling lights of the staggered stream of vehicles passing by below and bit back a groan, settling for a much-needed sigh instead. What he would give for something, anything, else to do instead of this godforsaken task.
The door opened. "Do you think anyone would care if we simply marked all of them as acceptable and gave each applicant the standard five hundred dollar scholarship?" he questioned without looking at the person who stood framed in the doorway. He knew who it was. About to give in and call it a night, despite the fact they had only been working for a pathetic stretch of forty-five agonizing minutes, if that, his nose caught the captivating smell of coffee. Finally interested in something besides his unappetizing thoughts, he slowly turned around and met her amused look with a grateful one of his own. "You're the best."
She gave a small chuckle and sauntered her way into the room, depositing his cup of salvation on his cluttered desk. She understood her partner, had worked with him longer and more closely than she cared to admit. If they were to complete their task in the time frame allotted to them, then he needed sustenance in the form of caffeine. Otherwise she was going to end up giving him a swift kick to his posterior. "Not a chance in hell," she responded belatedly to his question and took her seat at the next desk over, her mug of hot tea placed carefully off to the side. Decaffeinated tea. Caffeine was not one of her vices. "We don't have a choice, as you very well know. We never have a choice when it comes to any of our assignments. I don't have to tell you that it's our punishment for not coming through last week. We failed. Therefore, we are the lucky saps who pulled desk duty." And there were more agents than she could count who were secretly thrilled that they had been awarded the chore. They were probably all laughing in their sleeves that they had managed to sidestep the task.
He had a number of arguments about why they had failed on their last mission, mainly because one simply couldn't fight nature or the unexpected tropical storm that had cheerfully turned into a category four hurricane and had ripped through the area hours before they were set to meet up with an informant. They lost the contact, lost the valuable information, and had ultimately failed on their mission due to no fault of their own. Failure was failure, with no excuses ever offered or accepted, even when Mother Nature was clearly at fault. They had ended up here, doing the last thing either one of them ever liked doing. Paperwork. There was nothing quite like reading paperwork. "I wouldn't call us lucky," he replied sarcastically. "We're more like the…"
She cut off the stream of imaginative swear words about to come from his lips with an authoritative wave of her hand. "Enough of that," she muttered briskly and reached for her next application. "Whatever the reason, we've been given this job. It's up to us to sort through the paperwork, to find the most deserving applicants, award a few scholarships as needed, as well as screen for any possible, ahh, potential hopefuls for later use." She arched an eye at the thought. Only a handful of applicants every truly panned out from this one aspect of the agency's careful and extremely selective screening process. But it was worth every effort. The agents who had been discovered through the scholarship avenue were stellar. Even better, not one had ever turned down the offer to join their agency when the truth had been revealed to them.
He took a large sip of his coffee, waited until he could feel the effects of the caffeine start to pour through his veins, before he reluctantly followed her example and reached forward for another application. "You would think that the powers that be would have devised a better recruiting system by now," he noted after reading what he considered to be a sub-par essay and placed it on the negative side without a moment's regret.
She skimmed her most recent application and rejected it in ten seconds flat. There wasn't a need to complete a more in-depth check with the aid of their high-tech equipment and the phenomenal computer network available to them. "It's worked extremely well for the past twenty-five years," she explained needlessly. "You know us as well as I do. We don't tamper with anything that works."
"It's still a horrible assignment," he grumbled under his breath, wishing that he could be doing something, anything, that was more active. Instead, he was stuck inside the office, unable to move from it until they had completed their job. All he could think about was how much it sucked.
"I never expected to be the one to start screening applicants," she answered, setting aside yet another piece of paper. Nothing extraordinary so far. She had found two applicants who she felt deserved the standard scholarship but no one was standing out in any way, shape or form. When she had asked her supervisor over an hour ago how they would know if they had discovered someone deserving of the full scholarship and future consideration as an agent, he had responded with the simple answer that they would know it when they found it. With no clear objectives or requirements, it was frustrating. All they had to go on was their own intuition. She stared at her finished pile and hoped she hadn't missed someone. She couldn't be sure. "I've finished with the last names beginning with M. How are the A's going?"
He flipped over the next application, unperturbed by his lack of selections. It didn't bother him one way or the other if he had missed a potential or not. He wasn't about to invest his normal amount of energy in what he perceived to be a fruitless and meaningless endeavor. "All finished. In fact, I was finished with that particular letter of the alphabet before you went to get the coffee," he boasted with a smug grin that had her rolling her eyes. He decided to rub it in a little further. It felt good to be ahead of her. "By the way, I've already checked over a few B's."
Very competitive in nature, it rankled to know that he was further ahead than her. She did her best not to let it bother her. "Have you found any possibilities yet?" she wondered aloud. The agency handed out the standard scholarships to a predetermined number of candidates in order to make the entire process appear more realistic and to not draw any attention to their true aim. Secrecy had been their strongest weapon, would continue to be so for years to come. It had worked for twenty-five years. No one, not a government agency, a single rejected applicant, or standard scholarship receiver, had ever caught on or complained.
"Nope. Not a single one." He scrubbed a hand over his face, felt the stubble that was starting to appear, and stared at his mug, willing it to have something stronger inside it than simple coffee. With lids half-closed, he barely perused the next one before rejecting it, too.
They worked together in companionable silence for the next five minutes, both as focused as they could be on the extremely mundane and unexciting task of reading scholarship applications from young adults who had just graduated from high school. It was difficult, especially when the next essay sounded like a carbon-copy of the one before it. Then he came across a name and an application that had him frowning. He read it over twice while he could feel an excitement start to hum through him, which was extremely unusual since he had only expected to be bored through the entire chore. But he couldn't deny the excitement or the possibility that he had managed to strike gold. It felt even better because it had eluded his partner. Somehow he knew that he had come across a different one, one that their supervisor may just feel met the 'potential' category. There wasn't anything wrong with his intuition. He set the paper down and flipped on his laptop.
Lifting her head, she caught the flurry of motion from her partner. Her eyebrows snapped together while she watched him hurriedly type into his computer, beginning the process of an in-depth background check. "It looks like the fishing expedition may have finally caught someone," she mumbled quietly and stood up from her seat, her latest application forgotten on her messy desk. Without hesitation, she walked behind his chair and picked up the one that had caught his interest. "Gotta like the alliteration of the name," she remarked aloud.
"She graduated from high school a week ago and is scheduled to attend NYU in the fall," he informed her after checking out the information on his screen. "Obviously, she's already been accepted there. And, surprise, surprise, criminal justice is her declared major."
"She wouldn't have applied for one of our scholarships if it wasn't," she replied smoothly. Nowadays, the agency only gave out funding to criminal justice majors. It was the only change that had been made to their scholarship program since criminal justice was still a rather recent program of study. Although she already had a pretty good idea why the applicant had caught his attention, she decided to play dumb and gestured towards the picture of the smiling girl on the screen. "Tell me. What's so interesting about this one?"
He shot her a look of disbelief over his shoulder. When he saw the amused glint to her eye, he decided to make her tell him the answer to her own question. "Read her essay, if you haven't done so already. It will tell you why she's interested in pursuing a career in her chosen field."
"The Reason Why I Want to Study Criminal Justice," she declared dramatically, earning a small, playful nudge from him that told her to ignore the theatrics and move on. "All right, all right," she gave in with a short laugh. "I'll be serious. Let's see why she wants to make this her chosen course." She read the essay, thought about the information he would have had access to on their computer network, and then asked, her voice tinted with a bit of astonishment to it, "Has she really done all of this?" If she had, then she would have already assisted in more arrests than their newest set of recruits.
"She's done more, a whole lot more, than she wrote down," he shot back smoothly. "For some reason she was being extremely modest." He pointed out the information on the computer screen, which showed a list of the applicant's assistance in apprehending various types of criminals with many different agencies, ranging from her local police station and going all the way up to the United States Secret Service.
She absorbed the information but focused on something completely different. The name. It was written at the top of the screen, printed in a vibrant red instead of the customary black. Her manicured nail tapped against the screen, calling attention to it. "Why is her name written in red?" It was puzzling. She had run the names of the first few applicants she had perused through her computer, not because she was interested in finding out their backgrounds or in pursuing them as potentials for their agency, but because she had wanted to discover how the process worked. None of the names she had researched had been written in red. They had all been showing in plain, boring, and basic black.
"It looks to me like our supervisor was testing us," he answered back with a smart chuckle, not the least bit surprised, and correctly guessing that he had already gone through the applications and had red-flagged any potential hopefuls. "He's already made his mind up about this one, that's for sure. He wants her here, if at all possible."
"So, what do we do now?" It wasn't the same type of adrenaline that kicked in when she was fighting an enemy or running for her very life, but it was oddly stimulating to have come across a person who could become an agent. A potential. A hopeful. It was certainly better than reading boring application after boring application.
Even if he had had doubts about his intuition, they would have been erased by the flashy red of her name. Running his fingers along the top of his desk, he remarked decidedly, "We offer her the full scholarship, of course. It's what brought you and me into the agency, as well as many others."
"It was hard to turn down a free ride," she remarked truthfully. Then she peered closer, reading more about their find. "But there could be a problem with her. I don't know if NYU is the best place, not if we want to invite her into our fold." She tapped the computer screen again when he whipped his head around.
He had missed something. He didn't like overlooking anything. "What's that?" he barked out sharply.
"She's got something that we never had, something that the agency generally prefers their agents not to possess," she replied frankly. Lone wolves were recruited, not people with the large amount of family that their potential had. Their supervisor generally preferred agents without any ties. She couldn't think of one agent who had any close family ties, or even a close friend, other than someone in the agency.
He saw what she was pointing at, noticed the multitude of family and friends that were listed under her name, and felt a curse word burst from his lips. She was right. The list began with the members of her immediate family, included an impressive list of friends, some who he knew had to be the children of millionaires, and ended with the name of her current (and only) boyfriend. She was hip-deep in what their agency believed to be liabilities. Steepling his hands together, he thought about it and then nodded. In his mind it was already decided. Obviously their supervisor was willing to overlook the many connections she would have outside the agency. He frowned, trying to think like their supervisor. "She can't be forced into joining us. No one can. But she could possibly be enticed."
It seemed farfetched that such a typical all-American girl would ever want to leave her family and friends behind but she was intrigued by the notion and informed him that the older brothers were already in college. "She has two siblings who are also enrolled at NYU. Her older brother is in pre-med while the next one is working on a degree in journalism. When she joins them in the fall that will mean her family will have three children in college. I don't need to tell you that has to be expensive for them, even if the family does get a generous discount with three siblings attending the same university. Maybe she would accept our offer." She brushed back a strand of dark brown hair and contemplated the information but she didn't believe there would be an acceptance coming their way. If a miracle did happen and the hopeful did accept, then they would need to get her as far away from the East Coast as possible. "The thought of a free ride to college was very enticing to us but we were both relatively alone in the world. She's not."
They were both living proof that the agency preferred agents without ties. While she had grown up in the foster system, bouncing from home to home, he hadn't been as alone as she had been. An alcoholic mother, an abusive stepfather. To him, they didn't count or ever matter anymore. He had been more than willing to leave them behind when something better and more exciting had come his way. He shook away the thoughts of his life before he joined the agency and focused on his partner. Although he could have found out the information just as quickly, he had learned a long time ago it was best to keep her involved in whatever task they were working on. "Where does she live again?"
"New York," she answered, looking at him expectantly. She waited for him to make the decision she had already come up with before adding, "In a small town called Sleepyside."
"And she's planning on attending NYU." He stroked his chin, aware of how unacceptable that would be to their supervisor. For it to truly work, she would need to be separated from her large support system. If she were to accept their full scholarship, it couldn't be to NYU. That would be much too close to her roots for any further training to occur. It would have to be farther away, not only from the influence of her family and friends but also from her boyfriend. No ties was always the most acceptable. "The best thing to do would be to try and get her away from the influence of her family and friends," he thought aloud and then nodded when he saw the answering gleam in her eyes. "The entire way across the country out to do it."
She watched him scribble down the information as it came to him. "California, huh?" While there were many fronts that housed their agency, both in the United States and around the world, California had been the first and was still the most prominent. It was the exact place she would have picked for their candidate.
"He obviously would like her there. Plus it would put a significant amount of distance between her and her family." He stared down at his paper and contemplated how to write out their offer to the candidate. "Let's see. It'll have to be her choice. That's the only way it would work. We also can't seem too obvious or raise suspicions." He considered the problem for a moment and then announced sagely, "We'll begin by offering her the standard scholarship for her four years at NYU."
"Five hundred dollars a year," she interjected but tilted her head to the side, perplexed. It didn't make any sense to her. "Why would we do that?"
His lip curled at her interruption. "To make it seem even more legitimate."
"But that doesn't get her to California," she pointed out needlessly. "That's where we want her."
"Give me a minute. I'm coming to it," he admonished her with a sardonic tilt of his lips. "I was going to say before I was so rudely interrupted that we can offer her two options. Should she decide to stay at NYU, she can have the standard scholarship but, if she chooses to come to California University instead, she can have the coveted full ride. No need to pay tuition, room and board, or even the astronomical cost of those pesky textbooks. She gets it all. And we get her away from her home. It's a win for all of us." Twirling his pencil, he leaned back in his chair, a satisfied smile on his lips.
Her family and friends wouldn't win. They would end up losing, she realized, but kept the thought to herself. She refused to acknowledge the tiny amount of guilt that wanted to gnaw at her. They could only make the offer. The ultimate choice would be up to her. "But will she take it?" She looked at the picture of the smiling blonde. There wasn't a hint of desperation or unhappiness to her or anything to suggest that she would be willing to leave everything she knew and loved behind. If anything, she looked joyful, buoyant, and, worse still, completely innocent, the exact opposite of how many of the agents had looked when they first came into the agency. Shrugging her shoulder, she knew they couldn't do anything else but attempt to tempt her.
"Time will tell." He clicked out of the screen and began the task of typing up her acceptance letter, as well as adding in the unusual condition for her full scholarship. Knowing that she would need a reason why the full scholarship would come to her only if she chose to attend California University, he went with the truth and explained in the letter that CU had the very best and most progressive criminal justice program in the country. It was only a slight bend to the truth when he added in that the full scholarship could only be awarded to an attendee of that particular university. He made certain to include that they would take care of enrolling her in the university should she accept their offer and gave her two weeks before they would need to hear her decision. "She wants to be a private detective, did you know that?" he questioned with a small, wry chuckle. A few fronts were private detective agencies, such as the one that they were currently working out of. "It is her wish to open up her own agency with her best friend after she graduates from college and gets her license. It would be called The Belden-Wheeler Detective Agency."
She stopped looking over his shoulder and rushed over to her desk where she began searching through her applications, carefully examining each of her W's. No Wheelers. There was nothing even remotely close to a Wheeler in her stack. "That's odd," she mumbled, her hand on her hip and a frown on her lips. "Her would-be partner didn't apply for a scholarship."
"That would be because she is quite wealthy," he answered while rereading the draft of his acceptance letter. Satisfied with it, he saved it and emailed it to their supervisor, who would have the final decision on any choices that they made, as well as make any corrections or deletions. "Her father would be Matthew Wheeler, of Wheeler & Hart, International. In case you didn't make the connection, her mother is Madeleine Hart Wheeler, also a co-owner in the business. Her mother's involvement is more of a technicality, by choice, from what I understand. Needless to say, their daughter wouldn't need the extra assistance."
Out of curiosity, she typed in the name on her computer. Not surprisingly, Madeleine G. Wheeler, nicknamed Honey, was written in black, not red. The information below her picture was an exact copy of what he had recently told her but also included the name of her adopted brother. She sat back in her seat and murmured, "She's not to be considered."
"Family's too high profile," he mumbled back. "We typically don't seek out the offspring of multi-millionaires."
She had to laugh at that before she sobered. "Be that as it may, I seriously doubt if one Beatrix Belden will be accepting our rather lucrative offer. She doesn't seem to be the type to want to leave her family and her friends. If anything, I would say that she draws her strength from them." She didn't add that she had also just made the connection that the girl was also dating the brother of her best friend. It seemed to be yet another nail in their figurative coffin. She wouldn't be coming.
"I'm in complete agreement with you." The offer had to be made even if he felt that it was useless. They couldn't overlook her simply because she didn't possess one of the normal prerequisites of having no close ties to anyone else in the world. "It would take something huge to happen, something disastrous, for her to accept our offer. If you ask me, she'll be attending NYU in the fall with the rest of her family." He took one last look at her application before flipping it over and then began reading the next one but he couldn't get Belden out of his mind. He had serious doubts that he would come across anyone who had as much promise as the girl from Sleepyside.